


White

by jarofhearts



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Loneliness, M/M, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2797523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofhearts/pseuds/jarofhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's December, and Fernando has never been this alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwakeMySoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwakeMySoul/gifts).



> This is surprisingly sad for December, but sometimes it's just how life goes. I wish everyone who reads this that their time leading up to Christmas is better, filled with joy and love and light. <3

_I've been to the mountains, left my tracks in the snow where souls have been lost and the walking wounded go._

* * *

Sometimes Fernando thinks he got used to being alone.  
  
The bed is empty when he wakes up, sheet too cold, too white, like everything else. He lies there and looks up at the ceiling, white too, often long enough that his eyes hurt when he finally stops.  
  
Breakfast used to be his favourite meal of the day. Taking time for it, steaming coffee, a croissant with butter and dipped in marmalade, the French way. Bits of chocolate, slices of fruit, deliciously sticky fingertips.  
  
Now it’s just coffee, because everything else tastes stale on his tongue.  
  
He gets lost sometimes, in his own mind, wandering older paths, those that made him happier. Memories that bring unbidden smiles to his face. But when he’s back he aches, bone-deep in his joints, and he feels old and used. As if he rearranges himself every time and always comes away a bit more wrong.  
  
Outside he sees girls wrapped in soft knitted scarves, thick winter pullovers, white and grey, gauntlets and leg warmers, snow flakes in their hair.  
  
It doesn’t even feel cold while he walks past black skeletons of trees, through a sea of snow.  
  
Snow on his lashes, snow on his gloves, snow on the tips of his shoes.  
  
Maybe he’s drowning.  
  
He looks in through windows from outside while he passes, from where warm lights are glowing, promising home. But always to someone else. His eyes burn and his skin tingles and he wants out of it, just away, but rubbing doesn’t help. He’s been born to it and he’ll die in it.  
  
And he invested himself, his heart and mind and soul, long ago. Another skin he can’t shed, won’t be able to, never, ever, ever, ever.  
  
He misses the messages in the snow on the car shield, ‘hoho’, ‘good morning’, ‘brrr...’, ‘you’re perfect’.  
  
At home he pulls warm socks over his feet, watches how they swallow his toes until he can barely see them move in them anymore.  
  
The only way he can keep his hands warm is to wrap them around mugs filled with hot chocolate, watching the cream dissolve, letting the heat seep through the porcelain into his skin until it feels his hands are burning.  
  
And sometimes he looks around, gaze sliding over the familiar corners as if never having seen before, searching, and he realises he’s alone.  
  
Utterly, all-encompassingly.  
  
Books are his best friends. They bring him far, far away, from these walls and floors, the countless footsteps on endlessly tread paths he imagines to see but aren’t really there. A bit of relief. He relies on them, needs them, clings to them because he thinks otherwise he’ll lose his mind.  
  
Because it isn’t supposed to be just white. There are lights in his window too, little flecks of gold. A splash of red in form of the mug he fills with coffee or hot chocolate. Blue in his knit jumper, hem and sleeves too long, the one he wears when he needs to feel some resemblance of warmth and coziness. Yellow-orange flickering in the fireplace, moss green in his long scarf.  
  
But all he sees is white. Snow, crystals, flakes, footprints. White.  
  
And he’s alone.  
  
When it happens, it’s as if the ground is sucked out from under him, and he’s falling, falling. Doesn’t feel real, as if having stepped back onto the paths of his mind.  
  
But it _is_ real.  
  
It happens the moment the door clicks close and he hears a shaky sigh. The moment he touches and nothing underneath his fingertips dissolves. Cotton, winter jumper, warm, solid, body below, everything that comes with it. His fingers curl in the collar and he sobs, suddenly and sharply, and he’s gathered up in a pair of arms, so shockingly real and there, and he clings to him like the lifeline he has suddenly been thrown, and he feels real (moving muscles, warm neck, soft hair, cold nose) and looks real (green-brown eyes, moist lashes, long fingers, familiar freckles) and sounds real (uneven breath, tiny laugh, soft voice) and smells real (clean, fresh, wind, snow, home).  
  
And with the tears that come, the colours finally seep back into Fernando’s world.

 


End file.
